Digital Photo Storage

What do you guys use to store your Pictures on ?, I previously used Rewriteable Discs, but my PC began throwing the toys out the pram about using them for reasons unknown and recently I've purchased a 1TB Portable Hard Drive that im using from here on so that i don't need multiple discs or have any issues with my computer with them.

My main question is, what do you use and why, what do you think is best for storing digital pics ?.

 

Re: Dogital Photo Storage

I also use external drives. However, you need to be aware that, at some point, your drive is going to fail. So you need to ensure they're still stored elsewhere - either on a web-based service, or on a second hard drive, or as before on dvd's

 

Re: Dogital Photo Storage

I put my stills and movies on dual external 500Gb hard-drives. Filled up the first volumes summer 2010, I'm now well on the way to filling up the second pair.

Regards

 

Re: Dogital Photo Storage

I'm using a portable 1TB drive too. I also have an online storage account. This was with Humyo but I've just checked it to look at pricing to write this reply only to find this is run by Trend Micro now. With Humyo I was getting 100GB storage for around £45 a year. I now find this has gone up to a whopping £99.95 per year. You can still get 50GB for £59.95 or 20GB for £24.95. I guess it depends on the value we all put on our files, not quite sure what I'm going to do in the future. My camera RAW files are around 25Mb each so that's say 800 images for 20GB but I've got a lot of sound files at typically 25Mb too. This is an interesting topic, I hope we get some useful ideas.

 

Re: Dogital Photo Storage

Store my images on a second, non bootable drive in my computer and back up to an external drive which resides elsewhere between backups. Same strategy for my sound except both drives are portable.

 

I have 6 external hard disks.
One of which is kept at the inlaws in Poland, one of at my parents, and one in my storage unit.
I cycle them and update them as I travel round.

It doesn't take too long, I just plug the 3 I have to hand all to the pc at the same time..then do the others as and when?
Done it this way for over a decade, had 2 significant failures during that time, but lost nothing, had one occasion where I lost some pictures in May 2007 for 3 years but found them in a different folder.

 

I too found that my PC didn't like CD / DVD copies but only after I had 110 of them covering 9 years worth of digital imaging. My current system - based on hard earned experience plus 40 years involvement with Government computing policies is now as under :

1) when transferring from camera to PC <copy> images to memory stick and move to PC folder; this gives back-up copy
2) once edited copy images to a <current-month> folder
3) At each month end copy <current-month> folder to 2 hard drives [one master copy + one working copy for image requests]
then
rename <current-month> file <previous-month> file after deleting previous <previous-month> file
then
create a new <current-month> file
then
delete images from memory stick and restart copying monthly images from camera

After 2 years I now find this a very satisfactory solution and I currently have 1 pair of 500Gb hard drives completely filled and am 1/3 through my second pair of 500Gb drives. A personal choice perhaps but I am unwilling to countenance going bigger than 500Gb in case of damage to a drive; my first drive covers 9 years and has over 30,000 images it - quite a lot to lose hence my unwillingness to use a 1Tb disc.

 

I buy the biggest drive available in the £80-100 category. so I have a motley collection of sizes.

Have cleared 500gb of disk now..

Size doesn't matter.. I just drag and drop the whole folder, ok a new disk copying 12 years of images takes an initial 12 hours or so to back up... but after wards it's incremental.. and as mentioned before.. I have 6 copies.. the worst case being 1 disk approx 3 months behind the rest.. losing 1 is an inconvenience nothing else.

 

Similar to previous responses (multiple hard discs) but one pitfall to mention. If you periodically copy your master to the back-up devices, there is a risk that you will overwite good with bad if the master has become corrupted or accidentally edited (I have erroneously saved lower resolution versions over the original when editing for the web). This wasn't an issue when I was backing up to DVD-Rs, as I always ensured that I had several generations to fall back on. It's still a good idea to periodically create a set of DVDs but it requires more discipline than previously. I also retain the original unedited RAW files so that it is possible to re-create anything lost or damaged downstream. One final point, if you are going to the trouble of making back-ups, do test them periodically by opening sample files or running a slide show directly from the media concerned.

 

Just one small point, have you seen the price of hard drives since the floods in Thailand? :rant:

 

Great thread. To date my pics & videos have been backed up with all my other files to an external drive, but I recently determined to copy to dedicated ext hard drives so it seems I am following the general trend I am going for the 500 - 750G sort of size too.

 

Good advice! As I watch everything on the tele, one of the backups is always connected and in use. From time to time I swap them over. Another piece of advice is to keep one of them unconnected to a power supply, ie don't have one connected to the tele and the other to the PC. If you get a spike which knackers one you can always revert to the other. Also don't copy direct from one HDD to another: copy to the PC, check, and then copy to a replacement HDD. It is good practice to have generations of backups, but I don't bother for these files as they are not being edited in themselves ie I only backup once all changes have been made.

Backups can be quite a business ...

Regards

 

Re: Dogital Photo Storage

On a related note - I am hoping to start publishing some of my still archive to the web - is anyone using anything other than Flickr to post rail images to the web these days - the "sticky" thread about Fotopic in this forum which touches on the subject is a bit dormant which is why I mention it here? My brother uses Zenfolio. Maybe best to reply in the other thread if anyone has any comments/advice.

 

Whilst backing up my pictures to a external 500 gig drive, I also copy them to DVD as well. BUT with the price of SD cards dropping 4gig - (£4-99 at Aldi yesterday) which can store 500 piccys at large size, its not worth wiping them so I save the card and replace it with a new. Just need now something secure to save the cards in

 

Sure have they have rocketed and I noticed in PC World and Curry's last weekend there is a limit of two drives per customer. I looked at a WD 1.5Tb about a month ago and last weekend a WD 500Gb was now more expensive than the 1.5 which had mysteriously gone awol.

 

My basis storage is on the computer hard drive, but I duplicate them to 3 separate external hard drives.

 

One of those water proof bags they give out at the airport.

 

Until this post I hadn't looked because I didn't need to. Now I find that a 500Gb HDD has just about doubled in price since I last needed to buy one (or two).

Regards:spit: